sleep Archives - Page 3 of 4 - Ramblin' with Roger

Reality hits hard (with apologies to fillyjonk)

One catalog company I ordered from called me to tell me my card had been declined.

The blogger fillyjonk wrote on December 15: ” I dunno. Locally and globally, sad and difficult stuff.” She was SO right.

*Her post began: “Someone took hostages in Sydney. In a Lindt chocolate shop.” Unfortunately, that ended with two of the hostages being killed, along with the gunman.

*About the same time, I’m listening to this story of a guy killing his ex-wife and five of his ex-in-laws at three different places in Montgomery County, PA, just north of Philadelphia, before turning the gun on himself. Worst of all, I awaken the next morning to the news of 140+ people murdered by the Taliban in western Pakistan, most of them children.

*Locally, and more recently, there was an Amber alert for a five-year-old boy near around here, then canceled 10 hours later when the boy’s body was discovered. The abduction story was a crock; his 19 y.o. cousin has been arrested. Meanwhile, eight children were slaughtered in Cairns, Australia.

*The Daughter complained of sharp pain on her left side, and we went to the ER at Albany Med on Saturday night, December 13. We were there from 8:30 p.m. until 2:30 a.m., and bed after 3 a.m. I SO don’t do 3 a.m. well anymore. Then I went to church in the morning. I’ve been on fumes all week.

*She has some infection in or around her kidneys, and she has to take an antibiotic. But halfway through the regimen, the hospital calls to say that the type of infection she has is resistant to the antibiotic she has been taking, so she needs to take a DIFFERENT one and start the regimen all over.

*The illness meant that I missed two days of work, one full day, and two half days, which feels actually worse than two full days because my work rhythm is off. I was going to go to a luncheon to honor people at SUNY Central who had reached milestone anniversaries. (Because we were switched to SUNY Albany for a time, both a colleague and I missed both our 15th and 20th-anniversary luncheons.) But I missed it, seeing my boss, a former colleague, and two long-time friends get awarded. Worse, the ticket I bought ($30) went to waste because we were so shorthanded. Because…

*Our office secretary left on November 5, so we – well mostly a library colleague and I – have been answering the main phones. One of our library colleagues, Amelia, had a baby at the end of November, which is lovely, of course, but she’s out on maternity leave until late February. So when one (OR MORE) of the five, currently four, librarians is out, it becomes a strain on the system. There were just two of us two Thursdays ago (snow and the flu kept the other two at home), and two on the day of the luncheon.

We usually have a week’s turnaround on the reference queue but, currently, it’s about 10 days. This will EVENTUALLY rectify itself as the demand slackens during the holidays, but looking at the list of questions undone is depressing and frustrating. And one of the librarians will be away for a week around Christmas.

*One of our choir members has been away much of the year getting treatment for cancer in Arizona. My mother’s first cousin Robert is now on dialysis. And while I didn’t know them, I mourn the loss of my friend Steve Bissette’s parents, his father in late October, and his mother in mid-December.

*We have lost our custodian at church a few weeks ago. The Wife chairs the Administration Committee until the end of the year, so this is a task that involves meetings, et al.

*All this busyness has made it difficult to concentrate on Christmas shopping. One catalog company I ordered from called me to tell me my card had been declined; what I didn’t notice in the pile of mail unread is that the bank had pulled one card as compromised and replaced it with another.

*Of course, it’s been havoc on blogging. I have a daily blog and write one post every two days. It’s not a lack of topics, it’s a lack of time. This will explain, in part, an increase in typos.

*I’ve had a deficit in not only sleep but good dietary habits and housecleaning effort. The house is messier than even my relatively low standards can bear. Where IS my cellphone? It’s in the bedroom, SOMEWHERE.

So, happy holidays, everyone. I’m told it gets better; sure hope so.

Somniloquy

Sleep-talking is very common and is reported in 50% of young children, with most of them outgrowing it by puberty.

One night this summer, The Wife went to bed c. 9:30 p.m., while I retired c. 10:40. At some point, the phone rings. The phone in the office, down the hall from our bedroom, announces the call: “Call from Smith John. Call from Smith John. Call from.” No message is left. I tell The Wife it’s 12:02.

The next morning, she complains about this interrupted sleep from the phone call. I have no idea what she’s talking about. There was indeed a phone call at midnight on the answering machine, from the 615 (Nashville, TN) area code, though no message was left. Was I talking in my sleep?

From the Wikipedia:

Somniloquy or sleep-talking is a parasomnia that refers to talking aloud while asleep. It can be quite loud, ranging from simple sounds to long speeches, and can occur many times during sleep. Listeners may or may not be able to understand what the person is saying. As with sleepwalking and night terrors, sleeptalking usually occurs during delta-wave NREM sleep stages or temporary arousals from them.

Furthermore, it can also occur during REM sleep, at which time it represents a motor breakthrough (see sleep paralysis) of dream speech: words spoken in a dream are spoken out loud…

Sleep-talking is very common and is reported in 50% of young children, with most of them outgrowing it by puberty, although it may persist into adulthood (about 4% of adults are reported to talk in their sleep).

My late mother used to tell me how, when I was six to ten years old, I would occasionally get up out of bed at night, go to the bathroom, or drink some water, and sometimes even engage in a brief conversation, then go back to bed. The next morning she’d asked me how long it took me to get back to sleep, and I’d have no idea what she was talking about. It is very likely that I never actually woke up.

Here’s the link for sleepwalking or somnambulism which is also fairly common in children.

I’m SO Tired

On the TV show Grey’s Anatomy. Meredith and Derek are exhausted with a new baby. On another show, Parenthood, there’s a couple with a new, crying-all-the-time, infant.

For reasons I mostly don’t understand, for the last couple of weeks, I have been going to sleep, waking up anywhere between three and four and a half hours later, and then being unable to go back to sleep. I stay in bed for as long as an hour, then finally get up and check my e-mail, or, rarely, watch TV for an hour, then go back to bed, pretty much in time for the alarm clock. I usually DO fall asleep in that brief time between when my wife wakes up and when she returns from the shower; I know this because I am likely to have quite vivid dreams.

The annoying thing is that I’m often too unfocused to write a comprehensible blog post, to even start one. Yet the IDEAS are still there, which is actually worse.

I’ve experienced this condition before, for a day or two, and I can operate OK in the short term. But in this extended bout, not so much. There was a First Friday event I plugged in this blog, and which I remembered at 2 pm Friday. But by 5:30, when it was time to leave work, I totally forgot, went home, and at 6:20, I was too tired to go back out.

In case you’re wondering, I’ve tried having a glass of wine, or having nothing to drink; different times of going to bed (yeah, I know you’re supposed to go at the same time, but that only applies when that’s working.) I had been staying off caffeine until the last few days when I feared dozing at my desk.

Saturday afternoon, with absolutely no energy, I watched a little of the TV show Grey’s Anatomy. Meredith and Derek are exhausted with a new baby. On another show, Parenthood, there’s a couple with a new, crying-all-the-time, infant. Then it hit me: the last time I was THIS tired was nine and a half years ago

I HATE using them, but, in desperation, I took one of those OTC medications that are supposed to let you sleep for 3 or 4 hours, and it DID work.

But my friend Jon said that had a better idea – 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 see hear feel. You open your eyes and note five things you see, 5 things you hear then 5 things you feel. Then 4, 4, 4, then 3, 3, 3, et al. Always worked for him. Well, not for me; I found that it was so focusing – where am I at, 4 hear or 3 feel? – that it made me alert, and even the pill didn’t help.

To boot, I must have slept wrong one night, because the back of my neck aches much of the time lately.

My problem is, paraphrasing John Lennon (whose birthday is today), I have a tough time turning off my mind, relaxing, and floating downstream.

Beatles songs:
I’m So Tired
Tomorrow Never Knows.

It’s all about the music: Ride, Zombies, Thunder…

One of my daughter’s “new” favorite songs is almost a half century old. She heard it on a Glee album, so I had to play it for her by the original artist.

Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, died a couple days ago at the too-young age of 61, after battling pancreatic cancer. According to the timeline on her website, she wasn’t even able to attempt to go into space until 1977 “when NASA conducts a national search for new astronauts and, for the first time, allows women to apply.” The next year, she was “selected by NASA as an astronaut candidate — one of six women among 35 trainees chosen,” the same year she received a “Ph.D. degree in physics from Stanford University.” On June 18, 1983, she “becomes the first American woman to fly in space, when she “serves as mission specialist… aboard space shuttle Challenger.” She had a second mission aboard Challenger in 1984, and was scheduled for a third flight when the Challenger exploded in 1986, after which she was “appointed to the Presidential Commission investigating the Challenger disaster.”

Arthur gives his POV, specifically about her posthumous coming out.

The song that’s stuck in my brain is the great Wilson Pickett’s live version of Mustang Sally. As the chorus goes, “Ride, Sally, Ride.” A true American hero.
***
While I had read about this sentiment since the shootings in Aurora, Colorado, I actually heard someone in a physician’s office Tuesday morning, complaining to one of her colleagues, that neither President Obama nor Mitt Romney have said Word One about gun control. By contrast:
“Colin Ferguson snuck a handgun and 160 rounds of ammunition onto a commuter train in New York and shot more than two dozen people, killing six of them. His rampage dominated the news and stirred a national outpouring of shock and grief not unlike what we’re now seeing.

“It also prompted an immediate call from a Democratic president for a legislative response. Declaring that the epidemic of gun violence in America had ‘gotten so serious we should consider a lot of things that we haven’t done in the past,’ Bill Clinton made an explicit call for gun control on the day after the December 1993 massacre…

“Clinton’s subsequent push netted results, with the Democratic-controlled Congress passing an assault weapons ban in 1994. And just before the Long Island shootings, he’d signed the Brady Law, which mandated a five-day waiting period for the purchase of a handgun.” Unfortunately, the assault ban ran out in 2004, and the idea of bringing it back does not seem to be in the political wind.

The song that popped into my head is Lawyers, Guns, and Money by Warren Zevon; here’s the less-radio friendly version.
***
From yesterday’s Los Angeles Times: “Sherman Hemsley, best known for playing George Jefferson on… “All in the Family” and its spinoff “The Jeffersons,” has died. Hemsley was 74…”The Jeffersons,” which ran on CBS from 1975 to 1985, was the first series about an upscale African American couple in prime time… Hemsley earned Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for his role as the irascible business owner.”

Wasn’t always a fan of the show, but always LOVED the Jeffersons theme, which told the narrative of the series in an entertaining way.

We had a very busy weekend. So I was quite tired Monday night, and went to bed at the amazingly early hour (for me) of 10 p.m. Then at about 11 p.m., the Wife and I heard incredible thunder, and saw lightning so bright, it lit up the room, even with the shades down and my back to the window; it went on for 15 or 20 minutes, yet the Daughter slept right through it. Lightning Strikes by Lou Christie popped into my head, though if I could have found a version by the Albany band Blotto beyond this snippet, I would have gone that route.

A very talented young cellist at my church belongs to some cello consortium. They will be playing, I learned from one of my fellow parishioners, the song Kashmir. I got the distinct impression that most of them had no idea what tune that was. It’s a song by Led Zeppelin, originally on the Physical Graffiti album, and sounds like THIS.

Speaking of Zeppelin, here’s a cover of the song The Ocean (track #8) by Kurt Hoffman’s Band of Weeds, which I own on a 4-song EP from Hello Records, which I happened upon in my collection.
***
Also from yesterday’s LA Times: “Apple reported disappointing third-quarter results today that caused its stock price to plunge in after-hours trading. The technology giant said profit rose 21% to $8.8 billion on revenue of $35 billion, up 22% year over year. The results were less than what analysts had expected. Shares plummeted in after-hours trading, falling $34, or nearly 6%, to $566.78.” A 21% profit means falling stock prices.

The song: Oscillations by Silver Apples, from 1968, which I own on vinyl.
***
One of my daughter’s “new” favorite songs is almost a half-century old. She heard it on a Glee album, so I had to play it for her by the original artist. It is She’s Not There, the first single by the British group The Zombies, which went to #12 in the UK and #2 on the US Billboard charts and in Canada. “Rolling Stone magazine ranked “She’s Not There” No. 297 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.” I love it because the harmony vocals in the chorus keep changing the song from the major to the minor mode. It was famously covered by Vanilla Fudge, which doesn’t sound like the Glee version at all.

After the Zombies broke up, Rod Argent formed a group called Argent, which had a big hit in 1972 with Hold Your Head Up, which I’m TRYING to do, because I’m still a bit fatigued.

Z is for Zzzzzzz

“A growing body of evidence from both science and history suggests that the eight-hour sleep may be unnatural.”

More than almost any topic in the popular media, sleep, or the lack thereof, has been the subject of seemingly countless articles. This article from PARADE magazine is a typical example, which notes: “If you feel tired all the time, talk to your doctor. Persistent fatigue could signal a medical condition such as sleep apnea, an underactive thyroid, or anemia.” Here is Mark Evanier’s sleep apnea history, for example.

The Centers for Disease Control has a whole section devoted to sleep and sleep disorders, which cites diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity, and depression as being associated with insufficient sleep. According to a recent study by the National Sleep Foundation, 60 percent of men and women experience sleep problems almost every night. Harvard University research suggests that 7 out of every 10 adults do not get the quality sleep they need.

One of the great interrupters of sleep is Daylight Saving Time, which Jaquandor kvetched about. There is an increased number of accidents each time the clock goes forward.

Still, I was fascinated by a BBC article: “A growing body of evidence from both science and history suggests that the eight-hour sleep may be unnatural.

“In the early 1990s, psychiatrist Thomas Wehr conducted an experiment in which a group of people were plunged into darkness for 14 hours every day for a month. It took some time for their sleep to regulate but by the fourth week, the subjects had settled into a very distinct sleeping pattern. They slept first for four hours, then woke for one or two hours before falling into a second four-hour sleep. Though sleep scientists were impressed by the study, among the general public the idea that we must sleep for eight consecutive hours persists.”

The Beatles recorded at least two songs about sleep, I’m Only Sleeping and I’m So Tired.

ABC Wednesday – Round 10